Note 85 — Chapter I · THE TREATMENT OF NATURE IN ENGLISH CLASSICAL POETRY

In commenting on mediaeval out-door poetry Vernon Lee says (“Euphorion,” p. 120): “Spring, spring, endless spring—for three long centuries throughout the world a dreary green monotony of spring.... Moreover this mediaeval spring is the spring neither of the shepherd, nor of the farmer, nor of any man to whom spring brings work and anxiety and hope of gain; it is a mere vague spring of gentlefolk, or at all events of well-to-do burgesses, taking their pleasure on the lawns of castle parts.”